Hey everyone, im new to the forums but i hope to partake in any way i know how and i appreciate everyones input. i have a pretty big issue. i bought my ford ranger fx4 3 weeks ago, my first ford after being a chevy boy my whole life. was completely thrilled with the truck until now. truck is making a ticking noise, almost sounds like detonation but not, very quiet but still there. at EXACTLY 3000 rpm, it begins to make an engine rattle if you hold it at about 1/3rd throttle it will continue to rattle as it shifts through all the gears as long as its above 3 grand. if you move the pedal even a bit in either direction up or down the noise goes away. 4 shops have looked at the truck, 2 of them die hard ford finatics and NOBODY can tell me what this issue is. 1 shop said its likely the well known timing chain problem, and wants to charge me 600 dollars to OPEN IT UP AND LOOK!. another shop advised me that the noise is definitely internal, but they have no idea what it is thats gone and again they want to charge me about 500 bucks to open it up. and then the other 2 shops are saying its some sort of ping caused by carbon. both of them advised me to run a can of sea foam through it and see what happens neither of the ladder shops felt the issue was internal., i did that. no change. does ANYONE have an y ideas? this truck was an assload of money and at 116 thousand km it seems rediculous to me that its having issues like this already. its keeping me up at night and i just wanna love my truck again lol CAN ANYONE HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!

 

my 4.0 always has had a little tick to it...only when its cold and warming up...aluminum heads which the 4.0 has are noisy when theyre warming up..they tick

 

ya people keep telling me that which kinda makes me mad cuz i dont really want a tick in my 14 thousand dollar truck lol. it didnt do it when i first bought it and does it regardless of hot or cold

 

what kind of oil are you running in it?

 

oh and i should mention to everyone that this noise CANNOT be replicated at idle, the truck has to be moving and under load for this to occur, only 1 shop with a stethoscope claimed to be able to hear the noise when the truck was sitting still despite reving it, even bringing it up to rpm under load with the brakes on in gear.

 

whatever the dealership put in it when i bought it, they did a change i assume its bulk oil

 

well the 4.0 calls for 5w-30...and if it only occurs under a load im gonna say its carbon build up...that makes a ticking noise

 

ok well that makes me happy that another ford guy says that cuz thats at least some consistent info which has been hard to get with this issue haha what would you suggest for eliminating the problem?

 

put some seafoam directly into the engine through a vac. line...i think theres a how to on here somewhere

 

alright i'll look into that Appreciate the info, and so fast to, im gonna like this forum!

 

seafoam SLOWLY you dont want hydrolock time for plugs????possible coil breakdown know n 2 be bad

 

update: changed oil, put a decent filter on as the one they had on there was no name as **** and switched her to catrol and threw some lucas in, feels like the noise is quieter, but its also pouring rain out at the moment making it hard to accurately tell if its quieter or not lol. gonna check the belt tensioners tonight as research has shown me they have a tendancy to be noisey as well, havent changed plugs yet as it looks like a pain lol

 

Plugs aren't to bad...easy if you take the tire and inner fender off on the passenger side

 

You bought it 3 weeks ago? Take it back to the dealer you bought it at and have them deal with it

 

well it was actually a little more then that it was like 36 days ago, dealership only gve me 30 days on it and i backed out of buying any additional warranty because i wanted to pay as much of the truck cash as i could to keep loan costs down, lol so i told them about it, theyre gonna sell me the warranty i was gonna buy for half price, and it will cover the issue, just gotta figure out what it is, and 4 shops now i have been unable to identify the problem without spending a bunch of money on labour which warranty wont cover

 

the warranty only covers the repair, not the diagnosis.

 

so update guys, this ****ing noise will NOT GO AWAY had 6 shops look at it now, nobody knows whats up, plugs are changed, oils changed, full of lucas, full of sea foam, checked the wires they seem fine

 

At that mileage I'd say maybe the tensioner IF your truck was early y2k's. Your truck has an average of almost 30k a year. That's alot and I wouldnt be surprised if your truck was beat on. I hope you pinpoint your problem as these trucks are a great platform to build from.

Good luck, I'm sorry I couldn't be much more of help. I will keeping up with this thread as I am curious about your problem. My mileage is half of yours and I dread anything happening at that point.

 

I haven't dug into my schematics to prove it, but I have heard people claim that the 4.0 SOHC has a knock sensor. Might be something for you to investigate.

 

i would bet money that it is the timing chain.

 

It is possible, given that it does it on a cold/warming engine, moving and under load, and between 2500-3000RPM, these are all common denominators. However, there are also odds against that because it does it on a hot engine, and Ford resolved the tensioner issue somewhere during the 2003 model year run. Additionally, and based on his description, it came on hard and fast, that shys me away from the tensioner, for now. I also don't like what the results were when the guy went in there with a stethoscope, but no major details of that test were posted (ie, noise location was pinpointed).

* I wonder if he's running something other than the correct fuel, which is regular.

* I wonder if he's running, or in the past, if someone ran a K&N air filter, which lovingly disburses a film of oil onto the MAF, which results in the dirty and contaminated MAF telling the ECM that there isn't as much airflow as there really is, the result is that the fuel/air mixture is leaned out, and it pings. A dirty MAF can also happen w/o the oil shedding brand of filter. Doesn't normally trip a code in the ECM either.

*I wonder if there's any chance that the engine has been swapped out with an older one.

*I wonder what OASIS says about the past history? It's a question that has a free answer from a Ford dealer service department.

Lots of questions and things to rule out before jumping into a tensioner repair. Even worse to do a repair that doesn't solve the problem.

 

ford claims the fix alot of things, doesnt mean it cant happen. best example I can give is the cam phasor issues on the 5.4l 3valve motors. Ford claimed to have fixed them in 06, but one of my friends bought a 2010 and at 3k miles he had to get them replaced under waranty

my old 02 started rattling at 42k miles.